Chicken and Gorgonzola Roulade | You've Got Meal!

For some strange reason, people tend to appreciate meat roulades at a dinner table. Apparently, there seems to be some sort of fear of making such a dish or trying it. I remember my mom cooking meat rolls only a couple of times and on special occasions. And I remember my dad saying we have to say it was good. Don’t know why he said that, the dish was great. Is that ok, Dad? You’re now safe if she reads this post.

For me, making a roulade is a more interesting way of using a rather dull meat like chicken breast. Combine that with a couple of savory ingredients like Gorgonzola cheese, artichokes, cipolline borettane and the all-mighty bacon and you can elevate the pour poultry piece. 

Let’s talk ingredients: 

• a couple of pieces of chicken breast meat, 
• sweet gorgonzola, 
• artichoke hearts, 
• cipolline borettane (you can caramelize some baby onions if you don’t have them around), 
• thin bacon strips for covering the rolls, 
• salt, pepper, chili flakes. 

You can use a whole breast, but be careful how you cut it. The idea is to get a couple of pieces of meat that you can tenderize with a meat hammer (or a rolling pin) and bring to a shape works for the roulade. We got 4 “sheets” of chicken meat from 1 breast, enough for some medium rolls.

Place the flattened meat on the work surface and season it with salt, pepper and chili flakes on the inside. Put a small amount of cheese in the center and a couple of artichoke hearts and roll the meat. Don’t overdo it with the cheese, too much of it will melt and burn in the pan/oven. 

Use the bacon strips to cover the rolls, make sure they’re nice and covered all over the place -  it will help you keep the cheese in and not burn. We also made a roll using the same amount of cheese and some cipolline borettane instead of the artichokes – asparagus will also work really nice. Cook the roulade in the hot pan, medium high heat, in a couple of tbs. of olive oil, for 2-3 minutes, then straight in the preheated oven,190 Celsius for 15-20 minutes.

As a side dish, we tried to mix things up with some Jerusalem artichokes. So, we got a couple of nice potatoes, pop them in the oven to bake, alongside some Jerusalem artichokes and garlic, none of those peeled, only cleaned. After the potatoes are done, remove 1 quarter of the spud and use a spoon to remove the inside of the remaining potato. Use a knife or a spoon to remove the Jerusalem artichoke’s white insides, and mix that well with some Gorgonzola, salt, pepper and the potato you pulled out. Use the mixture to fill in the spud, sprinkle some hot paprika on top. Serve the potato with the chicken and some valerian salad sprinkled with some lemon juice and olive juice. As an added bonus, grab a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and enjoy a light, simple dinner.

Enjoy,

Thai Chicken and Salad with Rice and Caramelized Onions | You've Got Meal!

Sticky, full of flavor chicken/ Infused Thai rice/ Balsamic Caramelised Onions/ Thai salad with pears

 The most complicated thing about this recipe is actually coming up with the name – and what a fine job that was! This recipe lets shine that beautiful Thai combination of sweet, spicy and sour, each one of them underlined by one of the components:  the meat, the rice and onions and the salad. So this is how it goes!

For the meat:

·     1 piece of deboned breast (let’s say 400 grams) cut into equal pieces of about 3 cm,

·      the juice of 2 limes,

·      half a  thumb size ginger,

·     1 mighty powerful chili,

·      garlic (5-6 cloves),

·      honey (4 tbs.),

·      salt, pepper,

·      mint,

·      vegetable oil.

Quick note here: the idea is to get a spicy-sweet taste to the meat and we had a sublime chili jam (you can spell it confiture if you’re feeling French) that did exactly that. If you have such a thing (which is made of chili, sugar and vinegar, no spices) tone down the use of honey.

1.       Start of by making a marinade for the meat by mixing, well, everything in a bowl. Cover it and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour and then give the meat 20 minutes to get close to room temperature.

2.       Cook the meat (get rid of any excess marinade before cooking, otherwise the honey will burn fast) on medium high heat, in a few drops of vegetable oil, for 5 minutes on each side- you might need to cook the meat in batches.

3.       When all the pieces are done pop the remaining marinade in the pan, throw the chicken in there and coat it with the glazing marinade. Be careful not to burn the honey or whatever sugar you are using, shouldn’t be more than 2 minutes.

4.       Garnish with a couple of coriander leaves and you’re done with the meat.

For the rice and onions:

§  125 grams of Thai/Basmati rice (that’s enough for 2 people),

§  star anise, ginger, coriander stalks, salt, pepper,

§  400 grams of cleaned, small, red or yellow onions,

§  balsamic vinegar (4-6 tbs) and

§  sugar (1-2tbs.)

The idea here is that we are going to use the rice like a pretty neutral base (neutral in the Thai sense of the word) and we are going to bring a fantastic Italian touch with the “cipollini agrodolce” – sour and sweet onions.

1.       Infuse salted water with the star anise, some roughly cut pieces of ginger, coriander stalks (reserve the leaves) and pepper corns. Give 15 minutes for the water to really steal the flavors from the spices then cook the rice in it. A good idea is to either use the kind of rice that you can buy in a special cooking bag or use a tea satchel to keep the condiments in it.

2.       Meanwhile, boil the onions on medium heat for 20 minutes. Be careful when cleaning the onions, don’t cut too much out of the ends of the vegetable, you need that for them to stay intact while cooking, otherwise the layers will pretty much get loose.

3.       Remove the onions from water, let them steam for a minutes then cook them in a couple tbs. of olive oil, on medium low heat for another 10 minutes.

4.       Add the vinegar and sugar and mix well, to make sure that the cipollini are all covered in the sour and sweet goodness, shouldn’t take more than 3-4minutes.

5.       Plate the onions on top of the rice, with some of the cooking juice from the vegetables and some soy sauce for saltiness.

For the salad: roughly chopped iceberg salad, 2 carrots cut into strips with a veggie peeler, a medium red bell pepper cut into sticks, 3-4 tbs. coriander leaves, 1 pear also cut into strips with the veggie peeler, tiny, adorable, delicious and incredible cherry tomatoes (try and get as many colors as you can, it will bring a nice touch to the presentation), salt, pepper, lime juice.

1.       How to: just mix everything and you’re done. J

The idea behind the way we presented this (these) recipe(s) to you was that we started off with the sweet and we went from there to sweet & sour to just sour. All 3 components really stick together and the combination delivers a great dining experience that will make your day or bedazzle any friends that need reminding from time to time that you are a God in (your own ) kitchen. 

Enjoy,

Chicken Roasted on Salt

   

I’d like to start this post with a confession: I’m not a big fan of chicken, maybe it’s because I get to eat it pretty often and it’s mostly fried. But this time, I actually was excited about cooking it, and for 2 reasons. First, because I got my hands on this beautiful organic, yellow, plump chicken at around 2,5 kilos. I don’t  say this easily, but this meat was just both gorgeous and delicious. 

The second reason to be excited was the fact that I wanted to cook the chicken on salt, a first in the YOUVEGOTMEAL kitchen. The cooking was a 2 step process, first marinating the meat and the roasting it on salt, on low heat in the oven.

Now, I decided to cut the chicken into pieces, but you can choose to cook it whole, that gives it a more grandiose look (in my case, our tiny oven couldn’t handle a whole chicken). I cut the meat into 5 pieces: 2 whole legs, 2 pieces of breast, each with its own wing attached, and the back of the chicken, that I used to make some stock for later use in the kitchen. For the marinate, use  some olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, thyme, basil, garlic and pepper. Mix everything together and massage it into the meat, then leave the chicken to rest for 1 hour in the flavored juices. The cooking process is a piece of cake (or salt, if you prefer, that actually sounds easier than making cake). Prepare the baking tray by cutting a big enough piece of baking paper, pop it under some tap water, the just crumble it into your hands then return it to its original shape. This will help you handle it easier when you place it in the tray and it will protect it better from the heat (it will make cleaning the tray a piece of salt- see what I did there?). Next, take 1 kilo of salt and place it in an even layer in the tray and place the pieces of chicken on top, skin side up, and pour the remaining juices on the meat. 

Put the tray in a preheated oven, on medium-low heat and cook the chicken for about 80 minutes. You can check if it’s done by running a knife through the breast, if it goes in easily, remove it from the oven. Leave the meat to rest for 10 minutes before cutting it. I have no idea how the salt work, but the meat was tender, fresh and had a nice crisp on the outside and it didn’t taste like, well, salt. Definitely worth making. As a salad that suited the meat, we just  mixed some lettuce leaves (something called latuga bowl), chopped endives leaves, pomegranate seeds with a dressing made of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and honey – tangy, crunchy, sweet, perfect.

Enjoy,

Spicy Chicken Wings and Special Fries | You've Got Meal!

The title doesn’t really do justice to this dish as it is a very nice fusion of American, Chinese and Italian cuisine (the Italian part being the beautiful Nero D’Avola that accompanied the meat and potatoes J). This thing is a singe to make and it guaranteed to impress, especially with the spicy food loving crowd.

We used 10 wings that we cut in half, you can adjust the amount of wings according to your own desire. The idea behind cooking the meat here is that we wanted to cook it in a healthier way that just frying it, and we managed to do just that without sacrificing taste. Making these wings is a 2 step process. Start of by flouring the wings (that you’ve thoroughly washed) and placing them on an oven tray that you pop in the oven, at high heat for around 30 minutes. Meanwhile you have time for the second part, another dead easy step. Heat up 75 grams of butter on bain-marie, and this will serve as the base for a sauce that will coat the oven cooked wings. To the butter add 2 (or more, you hot devil J)hot pepper sauce -  I used tabasco, 1 tbs Worchester sauce and 1 tsp of red wine vinegar (I find this step optional, as the hot sauce usually has a fair amount of vinegar in it). Next, choose you condiments. My suggestion is to use ground ones, that mix well in the butter, and don’t overdo it as you can get a dusty feel to the meat. I used  smoked paprika, ground ginger, cardamom, dried garlic powder, curcuma, salt and pepper. Mix the spices with the spicy butter. After the wings are done, remove them from the tray and place them in a large bowl. Pour the sauce on the wings and mix really well, making sure the meat is fully covered with the spicy goodness, and you’re done with the meat. I find this recipe to hold its ground over traditional deep fried wings and you can choose it when you want to avoid an oily situation.

This being a super easy wings recipe, the side dish couldn’t be far away from it. For the Chinese style fries you’ll need to slice your spuds thinly and evenly – think of a No.2 pencil and quarter it- that’t the size you want. Clean the potatoes really well, making sure you get rid of that starch, and let them rest in salted water for 10 minutes. The other things you’ll need are 2 tbs of dark sugar, hot sauce- about 2-3 tbs., and (optional, I’ve explained above why), 1 tbs of rice vinegar, 1 tbs. of soy sauce and some cucumbers, cut the same way as the potatoes. Heat up your wok, add a couple tbs. of peanut oil (or vegetable oil) and add the sugar, hot sauce and vinegar. Immediately pop in the potatoes and mix them well to make sure they are coated with the flavor base. Cook them until almost done. Next add the soy sauce and cucumbers and cook those for another minute or so (you can sprinkle some chopped coriander on top for a more Chinese touch).

I can assure you that this wing and fries mix has nothing to do with its fast food cousins. It may be fast, but make no mistake, it packs a big punch and it is poised to surprise you.  

Enjoy,

Roasted Chicken with Spicy Brussels Sprouts | You've Got Meal!

This dish is another one that here, in the YOUVEGOTMEAL! kitchen, sooths us when the cold starts banging at our door. For me, any roasted meat does that trick and the spicy, lemony  (also adorable) cabbage goes really well with it.

For the meat use a couple of chicken pieces, upper and lower leg, a breast with bone (you can choose to cut it in half), the drums of the wings, you get the idea – the meaty parts. 

Mix some white flour with some ground pepper, smoked paprika and turmeric (about 1 tsp of each). Wash and pat dry the meat, then  coat the chicken in the flour until has a light layer all over. Heat up some olive oil and cook the floured meat on all sides until golden, shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes. 

Next, arrange the meat in an oven tray, cut around 300 grams of potatoes into cubes and place them aside the meat. Sprinkle some more olive oil, salt, pepper and put the tray in the oven on medium high heat for about 30-40 minutes.

For the sprouts: 

500 grams of cabbage, 

a thumb size of ginger, grated, 

1 handful of chopped green onions, 

2-3 garlic cloves chopped, 

the juice of 1 lemon, 

salt pepper, olive oil. 

Put everything into an oven tray that can be covered with a lid, making sure to coat the sprouts with all the flavors. The cabbage will only take around 15 minutes  to cook, so wait before putting them in the oven, next to the meat. I like the sprouts to cook whole, you can choose to cut them in half or quarters, but be warned that the cooking time will drop.

Plate the meat, spuds and sprouts and sprinkle some more green onions (or chives) on top.

Enjoy,

Chicken with Porcini Mushroom

For me, when someone says porcini, I get a tingling in my fingers. These are, in my humble opinion, the best mushrooms you can get or forage (let’s leave the wonderful truffles out of this, shall we? They might be mushrooms as a species, but you can’t make a stew out of them). And, for me, porcini have a different background, as they were introduced to me by the one of the most incredible people in the world, meaning my grandmother. She used to pick them herself in the forest or buy them from other foragers and I loved every tiny bit of that mushroom, any way she would cook it for me: in a stew, with different meats, grilled, boiled, didn’t matter. She was also very picky with her mushrooms: she only used young, fresh porcini, that had no sign of disease or bruising and she didn’t hesitate to throw any mushroom that wasn’t up to some very high standard. Oh, and another thing, she only eats 2 kind of mushrooms: porcini and honey fungus. Anything else, she threw away…  Honestly, nothing else. Bit weird, but she still is amazing and a great inspiration for me. 

So, when I went to visit her a couple of weeks ago, she gave me half a kilo of porcini that she pre-boiled and froze for me. What can I say, I AM her favorite grandson. So, with the mushrooms and my grandmother in mind, I decided to make a dish using the beautiful porcini. Now, chicken wasn’t a choice because I just love it, this recipe works great with some game poultry, quail or pheasant, but chicken breast is plain enough to absorb any spices you throw at it and it doesn’t outshine the porcini, so it’s a viable solution for this dish.

So, 500 grams of boiled porcini means that you can use about 300 grams of fresh ones or about 75-100 grams of dried mushrooms. When using the pre-boiled ones the advantage is that you don’t  have to cook it very long, but with the fresh ones, you get a bit more flavor. 

The meat: 1 free-range (special thanks have to go to my mother for this one) chicken breast, deboned. 

Also: 

2 tbs. of chopped fresh sage, 

a red onion, diced, 

3-4 crushed garlic cloves, 

a spicy chili, 

ground fennel seeds and cloves, 

2 bay leaves, 

Greek yoghurt, 

olive oil, 

salt and pepper, 

some rose wine (go Provence here, the Bordeaux style ones can prove to be a bit too strong for this kind of meat. If using game poultry, replace with red) 

(optional) some turmeric. 

Start of by heating up 3 tbs of olive oil in a heavy base pan, add the sage and cook it for 30 seconds, enough to create a nice and crispy outcome. Add in the chicken, cut however you want, and cook it for 5 minutes, coating it constantly with the sage. Next add the onion, garlic and chili and cook for another 3-4 minutes, after which add the boiled mushrooms, also diced. Add in the spices. Mix everything together and cook for 2 minutes, the add about 1 glass of wine. Bring to a boil on high heat, then reduce to a medium low and let it simmer until the liquid is reduce to half. In the end, add a couple of tbs. of Greek yoghurt and, optional, you can chop some parsley on the dish. Plate it, pour yourself some more of the wine and raise the glass for grandmothers everywhere, be they picky about their mushrooms or not.

Enjoy,

PS:  if using game poultry, make sure to lightly coat the meat in some flour before cooking it. This will create a nice caramelized exterior, as well help the sauce thicken.

Lazy Dinner for the Working Men: Sauteed Chicken Livers with Parmesan Polenta

Behind the title: something simple but filling for those long and exhausting weekday evenings when you come home from work and you just don't want to cook, but you want something cooked and you don't want to spend much time on it because you don't have much time and you don't want to spend a lot of money on ingredients because you are tired and you might mess them up.

Caramelized Chicken with Coconut Rice

The way I imagined this dish to look was a red/yellow color combination, but I didn’t have enough time to follow through on my initial plan to cook the chicken into red, so  I opted for a caramelized version of the meat, still in contrast with the coconut rice, that had a powerful yellow color from using turmeric. All of this combined with a fragrant green from using chives makes a lovely dish, with a gorgeous visual appeal, that also packs some great taste.

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Lemon and Garlic Chicken- Slow Roasted Goodness

This turned out to be the perfect dish for us during this weekend. The time spent preparing the ingredients is minimum, but the result is perfect. While the chicken is cooking, you have time to watch some bad TV to do other things around the house, but because is slow roasted, the chicken is very tender and juicy, so nobody will complain.

You use few ingredients, but with great impact and flavor:
1 free range chicken, cut into pieces
2 lemons, cut into chunks (we peeled most of the skin because it was very waxed)
7-8 garlic cloves
some thyme
1 glass of white wine
3 tbsp oil

Place the chicken in an oven tin, add the garlic, thyme and lemon, then the oil and rub the chicken on all sides to soak in the flavors, then pour the white wine. 

Cover the tin with foil and put in a preheated oven for 2 hours at low heat, as Nigella suggests :).

After 2 hours, remove the foil and let the chicken cook for another 45 minutes, at medium-high heat this time.
As you can see, we used free range chicken, it was pretty wild, a fatty compared to the ones we usually find in stores. The skin is thicker and it won't win first place in looks, but the taste is so much better. Cooking it this way just brings out the best in it.

The lemon, alongside the wine and the slow roasting, makes the chicken sooo tender, but also caramelises the skin in the end, when the foil has been removed. Delish!!! Try to think of a reason not to try it....see? No reason not to try it.

Enjoy,

Asian-Style Chicken Noodle Soup

For the past 24 hours we've been having tremendous amounts of rain falling, a matter very difficult especially for our ceiling, that decided that it had enough and made us a gift in the form of a couple of leaking spots. In this dire situation I did what any foodie would do: I cooked some comfort food, more precisely an Asian style chicken soup.I just love this type of cooking soup, that beautiful way in which they manage to combine great tastes. A very special combo for me is one that brings together spicy, sweet and salty in perfectly balanced dish.



For a rather rich and otherwise thick soup I used: 

2 packages of pho noodles, 2 tbs of canned bamboo slices, 2 green onions, a thumb size of ginger, 2 green chillies (use red for a nicer coloring), 2 garlic cloves, 3 tbs of black chanterelle mushrooms,2 tbs of canned mung bean sprouts, some sweet corn, soy sauce, 200 grams of boiled and finely diced chicken meat, mint leaves for garnishing. 

Start by heating up 3 tbs of vegetable oil and cooking in it the diced ginger and chilli for 2 minutes. Add the chopped onion, diced garlic, corn and  mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and mix for another minute, after which  add the stock, bring to a simmer and cook for a couple of minutes more. Turn of the heat and add the chicken and the noodles that will cook in 3 minutes. Pour in a soup plate and garnish with mung bean sprouts and mint leaves (add some more extra soy sauce if you need salt). 



So there you have it, the perfect way to admire any leaking walls: with some comforting chicken soup. You won't think about the amount of work needed to repair the damages. That's what I call eating your problems away.

Take care,Mr. G.